Policy & Regulation

DEA’s June marijuana-rescheduling hearing will feature seven designated private participants, and every one opposes moving cannabis to Schedule III. The federal government will make the affirmative case, while outside participants representing law enforcement, drug testing, anti-legalization advocacy, state governments, impaired-driving victims, and medical professionals challenge it. Here is who they are and what they’re likely to introduce.

Medical cannabis businesses have until June 26 to preserve expedited DEA registration review. Cannabis Business Advisors founder Sara Gullickson explains why the filing should prompt a hard look at license records, ownership disclosures, product flows, SOPs, security controls, and traceability before federal oversight becomes more consequential.

State-licensed medical cannabis operators have days to submit DEA registration applications and preserve expedited review protections under the Blanche rescheduling order. The June 26 business deadline applies across the medical supply chain, including cultivators, manufacturers, distributors, and dispensaries.

Canadian cannabis corporations are leveraging Chapter 15 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code to secure U.S. asset protection. Following a breakthrough ruling in Delaware, attorney Leah Eisenberg explores how cross-border insolvency frameworks offer a viable restructuring path despite ongoing U.S. federal prohibition.

To protect family farms and stabilize the volatile agricultural economy, the U.S. should regulate hemp-derived cannabinoids using a proven, state-controlled model similar to alcohol.

Before a single witness testifies at the DEA’s June 29 marijuana rescheduling hearing, the most consequential decision may already be made: who gets into the room. Finalizing the approved participant roster on June 22 is the first real indicator of whether the federal government intends to face the multi-billion-dollar commercial reality of the market — or bury it in administrative bureaucracy.

In a dramatic political paradox, Louisiana lawmakers recently passed a near-unanimous medical cannabis expansion while simultaneously introducing harsh new felony penalties for public consumption. The landmark legislation positions the state as only the second in the nation to mandate medical cannabis access inside hospital walls for terminally ill patients. But behind the bipartisan victory lies a complex web of strict operational boundaries, liability protection, and a sweeping federal opt-out clause that operators must understand.

The same United States House of Representatives that voted to let Veterans Administration doctors help vets access medical cannabis also voted, nearly simultaneously, to block the federal rescheduling process that would make such access legally coherent. That is not mixed signals; it is a fractured federal posture. For the roughly 9 million veterans enrolled in VA healthcare, it lands with consequences that are anything but abstract.

Federal efforts to reschedule cannabis typically are framed as a matter of drug policy, centering on taxation, criminal enforcement, and the plant’s classification under the Controlled Substances Act. Yet, this traditional framing increasingly obscures a deeper regulatory transformation. As a partial shift to Schedule III lowers long-standing barriers to genetic research, cannabis is rapidly entering the agricultural biotechnology era. This scientific leap is setting up an unprecedented collision with an unsettled federal oversight landscape. Regulators must now confront whether advanced cannabis innovations will be governed solely as controlled substances or treated as genetically modified crops subject to complex agricultural pest risk oversight.

The move to reschedule cannabis is facing its first major judicial test. Following a lawsuit by Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), the industry is left wondering if the shift to Schedule III is in jeopardy. While the April 23 order remains in effect for now, the legal challenge introduces new layers of uncertainty for medical and adult-use operators alike. To maintain stability, companies must look beyond the headlines. We break down the two critical factors that will determine whether federal relief arrives on time or hits a roadblock.